We interviewed MJ, a student at Brooklyn College, at the Hillel, near campus. We chose to interview her because of the unique perspective she would bring, as someone who experienced life in two different countries as well as different religious beliefs at different points in her life. 

Early Life

     On October 10, 1999,  MJ Romero was born in Veracruz, Mexico in the port city of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. Her mother, Olga Urquijo, ran an English- speaking private school, and her father, Carlos Manuel Romero Guerra  was an engineer. MJ’s family was relatively wealthy since her grandfather was a head of the primary electricity company in Mexico, and the income disparity between MJ’s family and her neighbors was clear. MJ recalled visiting the home of her nanny, who lived nearby, and realizing how much more worn it looked compared to hers. When she was three years old, her parents divorced and agreed to share custody of her. Having no siblings, MJ had a very close relationship with her relatives- affectionately calling everyone from second-cousins-twice-removed to great-uncles “cousin.” MJ fondly recalls playing after school with her cousins and considers them some of her closest friends even now. MJ’s mother began dating David Gorin, a Jewish television producer, on set in Mexico at the time, and traveled with him to Beijing for his job at the 2008 Summer Olympics. While her mother was traveling, MJ stayed with her father, a devout Catholic, who pulled her from her mother’s secular English school (now run by her uncle) and enrolled her in a Catholic school. MJ spent a lot of time in her grandparents home and became very close to them, attending church together each week. In the summer of 2009 her father remarried and on November 10th, her half-brother was born. The following January, MJ visited her mother and David in Vancouver where they were on set for the 2010 Winter Olympics. She says that this trip was her first time outside of Mexico and meeting David was the first time she ever heard of a “Jew.”

 

Watch MJ discuss her early experience in Mexico:

 

 

 

   Immigration to America

      In May 2010, MJ’s father died of a heart attack and her mother was granted full custody of her. Her mother decided to  move to Westchester, New York, where David lived. Her mother’s family was not very happy that they were leaving and her father’s even less so.  MJ describes her immigration experience as very rushed and confusing. She doesn’t remember too much due to the stress of the situations and her young age. She does remember that before she left, her schoolmates made her a box filled with their contact information as well as goodbye notes and toys for her to remember them by. In June 2010, MJ’s mother converted to Judaism and married David Gorin in New York, with MJ as her flower girl. The new family moved to Mount Kisco, a community in northern Westchester, where they live today. After her twelfth birthday, MJ chose to follow her mother’s footsteps and convert to Judaism at their local synagogue, the Lincoln Center Synagogue in midtown Manhattan. In order to learn more about her new culture, she left public school and enrolled in Westchester Hebrew Day School, a private Jewish school with a Judaic studies curriculum.

 

Watch MJ talk about her immigration experience: